The meatball bridge

17 Jan 2012 1 Comment

by zoomoods in Northern Trail Tags: dholes

The Martin Luther King holiday dawned sunny and mild, with temperatures climbing briefly into the 30s. My husband had yesterday off work and, incredibly, hadn’t seen the zoo since last summer’s renovations. So I took him on a two-hour tour of all the new stuff. He got a good glimpse of the shy new dark-gray wolf, and we lucked out even more when we arrived at the dhole exhibit.

Blyger and Prosit, the two boys from Sweden, have joined Piri and Fanni, the two girls from Hungary. As soon as we stopped on the viewing platform, a zookeeper came by to a conduct a canine-training session with meatballs and a whistle. He said he was “building a bridge” — by summoning the pack with his soft whistle and then tossing meatballs, he was teaching the dholes to associate the sound with obedience and reward. (A primary training goal: to get them to come off exhibit into their holding area at night, which apparently has been a bit of challenge these first few weeks.) Our friendly zookeeper also explained that this kind of training (also used with coyotes on the Minnesota Trail) was never conducted with Mexican gray wolves, the dholes’ predecessors in this space, because of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service guidelines for their management — in a program geared toward eventual release into the wild, the wolves weren’t supposed to get too comfortable with people. These Asian canids don’t belong in the North American wild and would never be released there, so training helps them adjust to their permanent zoo home while keeping their minds active. Because they communicate with whistling sounds themselves, the zookeeper’s whistle must seem friendly and familiar to them. And for carnivores, it’s always more tempting to do as you’re asked when there’s a big juicy meatball waiting at the end.

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